Here are a few random impressions of the CNN/WMUR/Manchester Union-Leader GOP presidential debate Monday night in New Hampshire.

All the Republican candidates came across as articulate and competent.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney exhibited impressive presidential stature early on, faltering only slightly as the debate questioning wore on through two hours.

Romney appears to have hired some of the best speechwriters money can buy. His answer to the expected question about the Obama-like healthcare plan he shaped and signed into law in Taxachusetts was highly polished, refined and well-rehearsed.

CNN during the debate aired advertising by Staples, the office supply chain. Romney's Bain Capital helped bankroll the startup of Staples in 1986. Bain Capital also acquired Domino's Pizza in 1998, and four years later Herman Cain stepped down from his longtime position as President and CEO of Godfather's Pizza.

The day before this debate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty on a weekend news show had referred to "Obamneycare" to link the two healthcare laws in voter minds.

When asked to expand on this during Monday night's debate, Pawlenty demurred that he coined the term because President Barack Obama said he had modeled Obamacare on Romney's state law.

Romney appeared pleased to see Pawlenty, who looked strong on most other issues, meekly back away from his mild attack. Pawlenty would have gotten far more mileage with a different blending of these two names.

He should have called these mandatory health plans "Rombamacare," a vastly clearer and more memorable word that rolls off the tongue so poetically that he could have had half the nation saying it just for its humorous, poetic sound.

Gov. Pawlenty, running with only a fraction of Romney's money and resources, needs to decide soon whether he is running to be president or some better-funded candidate's No. 2.

Candidates who trim their sails hoping to have both options usually wind up acting so mealy-mouthed and weak that they win neither the top nor bottom spot on their party's ticket.

Ousted Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum showed a different kind of weakness in Monday's debate — that of the pander bear.

As a senator, he had voted against the boondoggle of ethanol subsidies, but Monday night Santorum crawled on his knees to atone for this, offering to become a wholly owned subsidiary of agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland and its buck-an-ear billions in taxpayer ethanol subsidies.

Santorum sucked up mightily to the ethanol interests, proclaiming out of nowhere how much innovation this bottomless pit for taxpayer dollars and overpriced fuel it has become.

Those watching on a big screen TV could see Santorum's eyes reflecting the otherwise-invisible words "Iowa caucus," "Iowa caucus." Corn-rich, ethanol-profiting Iowa selects some of the earliest delegates to the Republican National Convention.

CNN was doing its liberal best (or worst) to put a thumb on the political scales to tip the debate against any Republican defeating President Obama.

When you design a debate to ask each candidate highly complex questions, then limit their response to only 30 seconds, this gives the moderator ample opportunity to chide candidates for speaking too long. And John King of CNN did just that.

Unlike the May 5 Fox News GOP debate in South Carolina, CNN chose to exclude former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's participation.

Johnson, an outspoken libertarian, could have been the debate's third candidate to favor returning America to a gold standard.

The second is business executive Herman Cain, who from 1992 until 1996 served as vice chair and then chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

The third is Houston-area Congressman Ron Paul, who served on President Reagan's U.S. Gold Commission and was the only candidate in Monday's debate to raise the issues of the Federal Reserve's and President Obama's weakening of our currency, and of the need for honest money.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann last Friday told the Minnesota Post she would "take a close look at the gold standard issue." She, along with Johnson, Cain, Santorum, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, reportedly are slated to speak during an 18-day pro-gold standard bus tour that began on Monday.

The 2012 election campaign is well and truly underway.

Lowell Ponte is co-author, with Craig R. Smith, of "The Inflation Deception: Six Ways Government Tricks Us . . . and Seven Ways to Stop It," in bookstores in late June.

Here are a few random impressions of the CNN/WMUR/Manchester Union-Leader GOP presidential debate Monday night in New Hampshire.
All the Republican candidates came across as articulate and competent.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney exhibited impressive presidential...